A triple meter dance, originally a dance-song from Latin America, usually in a major mode, often performed at a brisk tempo. In the seventeenth century the chordal patterns associated with the dance became popular as ground bass ostinatos for arias and instrumental variations, sometimes in the minor mode. By the early eighteenth century, the distinction between the chaconne and other ground bass variations were lost, so many chaconnes were called " passacaglia" or "passcaille". [JW; GJC

(Fr.) : A work built on an ostinato bass (or ground bass ), for all intents and purposes the same as the passacaglia . The main reason we continue to use both words is that the Bach D-Minor Partita for solo violin closes with a powerful monster movement he calls chaconne.

In music, a chaconne (Italian: ciaccona) is a musical form whose primary formal feature involves variation on a repeated short harmonic progression. Originally a quick dance-song from Spain, with rather indelicate text, the chaconne eventually became a slow triple meter dance which first emerged in the 16th century. The chaconne is understood today â€” in a rather arbitrary way â€” to be a set of variations on a harmonic progression, as opposed to a set of variations on a melodic bass pattern (to which is likewise artificially assigned the term passacaglia).